Dallas Higher fares helped Southwest Airlines Co. make more money than Wall Street expected in the f

Dallas Higher fares helped Southwest Airlines Co. make more money than Wall Street expected in the first quarter, but the company said Thursday that automatic federal spending cuts could hurt revenue in April.
Southwest didn t fly to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world s busiest airport, until it bought AirTran Airways tokyo hotel in 2011. AirTran uses Atlanta as a hub through which passengers connected to other flights, but starting this fall Southwest will turn it into a point-to-point operation primarily serving people going to or from the city.
Southwest announced those changes as it reported tokyo hotel that first-quarter net income fell 40 percent to $59 million, or 8 cents per share. That s down from earnings tokyo hotel of $98 million, or 13 cents per share, a year ago, when the airline booked $116 million in net one-time gains, mostly from fuel-hedging contracts.
Without special items such as fuel hedging, Southwest would have earned 7 cents per share, topping analysts forecast tokyo hotel of 2 cents per share, and reversing an adjusted loss of 2 cents per share last year.
Southwest said that revenue was weaker than expected in March and so far in April. Automatic budget cuts that went into effect in March have caused federal agencies to cut back on travel. The company said that it s "cautious" because of the potential effect of those cuts, but that recent bookings for May and June are "solid."
The airline also unveiled details of a new no-show policy for passengers using its lowest, nonrefundable Wanna Get Away and Ding! fares. Beginning with reservations made on or after May 10, no-shows will lose the value of the unused part of their itinerary and the rest of the reservation will be canceled.
Unlike most airlines, Southwest doesn t charge a fee to change a ticket, and it lets customers apply the amount tokyo hotel of unused tickets to new bookings. But the airline believes that the policy results in seats going unsold when passengers fail to show up.
On a conference call with analysts, CEO Gary Kelly was quizzed repeatedly about a glossy new advertising campaign that, unlike many previous ones, doesn t mention Southwest s policy of letting customers check two bags for free.
The analysts tokyo hotel wanted to know if the ad blitz indicated that Southwest is preparing tokyo hotel to charge for bags. Many of them believe that Southwest could make lots more revenue by charging for bags. Kelly suggested that the analysts were parsing the commercials too closely, tokyo hotel but he didn t close the door on bag fees someday.
Southwest still believes the bag policy draws customers. Kelly said it would lose $1 billion a year if it started charging for bags. But, he added, "I don t want us to be pinned down into perpetuity on what we might or might not do."